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Infinite BS Unlove
Sitemap Infinite BS Unlove * See also Infinite BS Hub of Analysis Of The Game Badness * See also A_Game_Shouldnt_Require_Interviews_To_Explain_Itself --- --- --- --- --- I do Express Alot of Venom about Infinite BS - BUT I AM NOT ALONE : Its largely disappointment for so much potential being lost, when a game isn't done as well as it could (and should) have been. A primary negative thing for me was how much they 'talked it up', and then it turned out that SO MUCH OF IT WAS pretty much just TALK. But the question I ask as justification : IS what resulted a reasonable result for $100 million and 5 years work ? (and something like another Est $100 mil for Marketing Hype to 'Sell It' -- Often as something it wasn't). Does the game warrant the Hype it got by the fawning media and the endless talk by its authors (and all those 'bought' reviewers) ? (Note - "Intent" isn't the same as "Execution" -- as in 'delivering a good game'. If it had been anywhere near as good as they said it was to be, it might've been "GAME OF THE CENTURY". But again, expensively spewing jive doesn't produce a game.) --- --- --- --- --- Game Company's Infinite Sales Job SCAM : The Problem - They Couldn't Deliver What They Showed : Awards won at one of the Game Industry Shows for the game Trailers ... Except much of the content/activities shown in them were NEVER delivered in the game (canned 'demo' sequences can be run on very powerful rendering machines with lots of the game mechanics turned off or non-existent). Perhaps they were planning on attempting such things (OR they knew EXACTLY what they were doing - and THAT IS called "Bait and Switch" a kind of Fraud ...) Likely, they simply "Bit off" more than they could Chew ? (and choked on it apparently.) Console Limitations, PC Limitations, Time and Skill Limitations, Management Limitations ($100-$200 million should have been enough money ? No?) The Game's theme seemed to change in major ways at least twice. Maybe Kenny&Co spent too much time making Trailers and doing Interviews, rather than having the effort spent actually working on the Game ? Truth is : What the Game Trailers showed was a far better game than what was delivered. The delivered gameplay was inferior to the two previous games, and the story was scatalogical. The Company was shut down after pumping out the contract-required DLC. Was there nowhere to go with what HAD been a successful Franchise? OR simply it all had already taken the wrong turn down a dead end path ? --- --- --- Bait and Switch - Infinite BS : Actually that may be a clue to Infinite BS's problems !!! - All that wonderful stuff portrayed in the trailers and released Vids and endless interviews - Which they, in the end, DID NOT deliver on. Many many features were cutback/changed. Was that because they'd contrived mockups to sell the idea, which actually were NOT viable prototypes - things they already SHOULD have discovered which the Game really COULD NOT DO (Like the extensive Skylines in those quite large/impressive cityscape 'levels', or those special Complex Tear Scenes) BEFORE they Marketed/Hyped it that way. I don't recall them giving back the Awards they had won at the Game Industry shows. --- --- --- Player Comment : Next Game, Dont Do A 'BioShock: Infinite' Name Abuse/Dishonesty Again : They should never have named Bioshock Infinite "BioShock". They should have dropped that label altogether. Slapping that name onto a game that has next to nothing to do with the actual series is just a cheap scam to grab peoples' attention and money ($$$). Instead, try to create a new intellectual property that's similar to what we loved about BioShock, but goes in its own direction, instead of just aping the name to sell product and trashing many of the good BioShock game elements. --- --- --- Infinite Was Just ' Rinse And Repeat ' ''' : Rapture was a recreation of a modern urban city environment with its society to be exposed to a new technology and then poisoned by a parasite's greed. It made no sense to reuse THAT to place a reactionary 1900 pseudo-christian religious cult in a setting where their fanatical-belief in racism and rejection of modern ideas would NOT be where they would want to live. (( '' "Cities" were seen as a moral cesspit, a home to Santanic Activities to that type of religious person. '' )) The Infinite BS game seems to have been the product of desperation - After delays and other problems caused by too much Revision : First written as a Luddite/Socialist rebellion in a Jules Verne floating wonder city, then rewritten into a fanatical religious Police State, and finally the Quantums faux-science fantasy mysticism took over, with its time travel, magic Elizabeth powers, and a building mass of disconnection. The Infinite game story turned into a stewpot full of festering rubbish with too many ingredients left uncooked, with more thrown in on top to try to cover up the muck as dinner time approached. Many Players Noticed This. --- --- --- --- --- '''Criticisms and Contrary Opinions by Online Commentators NOT Being Paid by the Gaming Industry : ---- "I like things that make me feel stupid" - Ken Levine on how he got the idea for Infinite's story Unfortunately then stupid Levine badly tries to stupidly explain it and the added stupid confusion makes everyone else feel lost (and soon stupid for paying for such overhyped tripe). ---- "So deep, video games are finally art! " - Video game journalist "Perhaps it has to do with game journalists of today having to justify their own existence by evangelizing games like BioShock Infinite as somehow being mature storytelling" ---- "I really wish they just focused on how society was during the capitalist industrial revolution, and how overboard things can get when they're in a setting like Columbia with that isolated cult twisting things. Rather than bullshit like time traveling, quantum mechanics, and paradoxes. You know, stuff KEN LEVINE HIMSELF ADMITTED HE DOESN'T UNDERSTAND. Why the hell did he go this route?" ---- Elizabeth's super power is literally opening plot holes in the story. They traverse universes to complete a simply fetch quest because they're so stupid they didn't think about how they were going to transport a pile of guns. Then they go to a universe where they already delivered the guns, so everything that happened in the previous universe was pointless. ---- "FINALLY! Someone who isn't sucking this game off and hailing it as the Holy Grail of gaming! BioShock Infinite isn't a terrible game and I did have some fun with it, BUT it is WAY WAYYYYYY overpraised by critics and the gaming community. The game simply isn't as good as everyone makes it out to be. Critics just praise it because it's an artsy-fartsy type of game that looks pretty so therefore it's automatically a 10 ..." ---- "A mediocre game. Forced limitation by the in-game currency and tedious endless scavenging containers to maximize your character. The random generating of enemies from the first two games was abandoned for scripted battles, which reduced the challenge significantly to mere grinds." ---- "Why did Elizabeth kill Booker thinking that it will end Comstock? There will be a million million other universes where she never killed him and therefore her effort would have been futile? There will always exist a universe where Booker never got killed and if that universe exists then it leads to more universes where Comstock could have existed. The whole game feels nihilistic. No matter what, there will always remain untold numbers of universes where everything that happened in the game to stop Comstock was meaningless." ---- "Its a Long way to go for Ken Levine to express his angst at the meaninglessness of everything" ---- "The Infinite timelines is what killed the story for me, too. Had they stuck with two separate timelines they could have made it work. But wanting to have infinite possibilities but also have a definitive ending is wanting to have a cake and eat it, too. It only works because its so confusing that people either don't get why this is flawed, or they don't want to get it or don't care. I personally really wanted to love the ending so I tried to find good rationalizations why the end does work - like, there is perhaps a "relevant subset" of timelines which represents BioShock Infinite, and these are the ones we see snuffed out by the drowning scene in the end. But.. it just doesn't hold water. This was actually the reason why I never bothered with Infinite DLC (which as I heard puts an additional confusing spin on things). I don't like "pretend clever". I'd rather have a more simplistic, dumber plot which works, than a supposedly sophisticated and complex one which completely disintegrates upon closer scrutiny. I can't say I find BioShock:Infinite to be a terrible game. It's just overhyped." ---- I still find it hilarious that Rick and Morty, an animated comedy show, manages to pull off the infinite universes thing better than this ridiculously overrated game. ---- "There is the grandfather paradox. I thought that for this game's ending being wrong, but people just say "Oh, you just don't understand it." No, I understand it, its why it makes no f**** sense!" ---- "After I finished the game, I really thought I was the only person in the world who thought "That's it?". It received inexplicable universal praise after its release - I was just baffled. As a big fan of BioShock on the 360, I really wanted to like Infinite. I gave it every benefit of the doubt as I pushed on through the game, hoping it would all come together in some climax along the way. NOPE - never happened. I was angry that I pre-ordered and paid a full $60 for this overly polished turd." So many whorish magazine reviewers licked it to make it shine ... ---- "I'm tired of all the praise this game got for its mediocre gameplay and OK but stupid story. The environments are pretty, but the story just makes no sense even if its understood because it contradicts itself and isn't well thought out. Characterization of Elizabeth makes no sense, its more limiting than the first BioShock, and the racism feels shallow because it avoids the real racial slurs that blacks and Irish folks had to endure in favor of a game sanitized presentation of racism, which doesn't drive the point home much at all." ---- "Insanely stupid". Not even taking the repetitive, boring gameplay into account, the plot is a complete mess that offends the intelligence of the Player in regards to multiple universes. Two core characters, both of which have their very backstories intertwined with multiple universes interacting, act like morons when it comes to jumping from one existence to the next. Elizabeth even expressly has had "infinite universe powers" since infancy! She and Booker try to hold promises for a person that they "no longer" made a promise to and act absolutely SHOCKED when that person is confused about what they're talking about. They don't plan how to transport masses of objects between worlds when those objects aren't even necessary anymore, and don't think to just jump to a better timeline when things start going south because... well, they're just that stupid. And the ending is complete GARBAGE. Even entertaining the imbecile idea that somehow drowning your own dad infinitely would somehow solve any of your monumental problems, that very act by definition means that there are INFINITE DADS THAT STILL NEED TO BE DROWNED. You aren't changing things, because it cannot be changed. That's what infinite means. You change absolutely nothing in the "grand scheme of things" that you're aiming for, whether the first time you reach the ending is even the "start" of the process or not. You just murder your own dad before he commits any of the sins you care about, which by infinite worlds theory means that you just murdered someone that has nothing to do with you. Good job. This game infuriates me to this day, and I need to stop typing about it now before I blow a gasket." ---- "This is THE most overrated video game I ever played, in my opinion. It is apparent that so many features of the game were removed in concession for some unknown reasons. First the skylines which were meant to be a way to create interconnected sandbox environments for Players to explore, and they ended up becoming props that barely spice up the combat. We see in the demos that the Players would have many ways to tackle hostile scenarios including threatening, picking off critical targets, or all-out guns blazing. The end product is a complete Call of Duty-ish shooting gallery with insanely boring weapons. If the graphical downgrades of Ubisoft games are sinful, the downgrade in BioShock Infinite is downright criminal. It's literally false advertising." ---- It seems that the main problem with BioShock Infinite is that the scenes were written before the story, and the reason for scenes happening was crudely shoved in. Like Booker and Elizabeth going to another dimension to get tools for the Vox. Its a cool scene I guess, but the justification for it even being there was hastily shoved in and doesn't make any logical sense. ---- "People applauding BioShock Infinite as art really goes to show how infantilised the modern adult really is. Pandering reviews from the magazines where the game company advertises is simply detestable." ---- "It's literally the most basic generic bare-bones FPS game I've ever played. I do not understand at all how people can call this game a "masterpiece" considering how empty of a game it is. Everything in this game is boiled down to pressing the A button, the gameplay is so empty. In fact I wouldn't even call it a game, it's more like a movie, and not a good one, seeing how the story is so annoyingly pretentious, over-complicated, and doesn't make sense." ---- "The ending of the story was an unlettered, rushed mess. In the course of 5-10 minutes they spam every single type of "plot twist" imaginable at you as if the ending of the game was an abortion of 3 different shitty boardroom ideas for what the "plot twist" was going to be. There's barely any plot development until the end, and then they spam everything at you suddenly, because it was very rushed. When you critique the contorted ending, people assume you didn't understand it." ---- "The original BioShock subverted expectations and showed us something new in an engaging way. The plot and the gameplay complimented each other elegantly. BioShock Infinite fell short of expectations and showed us nothing new in a self-congratulatory way. The plot and gameplay don't compliment each other at all; the gameplay only exists because the plot arbitrarily decided that it had to." ---- "Its not a smart game. Its not a deep game. Its not well-written. Its gameplay is nothing special at all. Its not an improvement over the previous games, but it is entertaining. The best thing I can say about BioShock:Infinite is that its merely entertaining. 5/10. " ---- "The hype around Infinite highlights a few interesting things about how games are being developed and received: How dull, shallow, boring and uninteresting the majority of mainstream triple-A games has become. People are tired of dumb shooters which don't even try or pretend to be complex and Infinite promised to be smart but failed. Video game journalists have backed themselves into a corner by dishing out high ratings for even the dumbest and dullest games. For Infinite its a matter of being graded on a curve. Players are easily blinded by flashiness. The main redeeming quality both the original BioShock as well as infinite have are the atmosphere and aesthetics. Infinite's gameplay though is mind-numbingly boring and the story is presented in such an unappealing and confusing way." ---- "BioShock 1 handled things better (especially with the characters) where it looked more like a RPG, slower, with an inventory. You had consider your choices on how you approached the world. They obviously changed that with Infinite being worried that the general Player would lose interest and not get spoon-fed enough." ---- "I don't understand why Black, Asian or Irish people were in Columbia in the first place. It's not as though the city has some sort of free flow immigration policy. It must (recently) be quite hard to access or know the existence of as we saw how Booker got there at the beginning of the game. A massive part of Comstock's ??? aggression was due to the protection of racial purity, etc. Why would he allow their entry in the first place? Enslaved cheap manual labor is one possibility, but his ideals would outweigh that. It's obviously an uprising like the one lead by the Vox would happen, so why would Comstock risk it, especially when he cares so much about racial purity in the first place ?" ---- "I thought this game was pretty meh. The combat is nothing new or exciting. Vigors were kinda cool but not the first time I've been able to throw fireballs or launch enemies in the air. The story got so convoluted and explained itself so poorly, I lost track and just decided to muffle out all dialogue and shoot at whatever was moving until I got to the end. I had to look up the plot on YouTube. The graphics were pretty look at, but that can be said about most games released at this time. Graphics alone can't save a bad game, they only enhance a good game." ---- "You cannot be politically correct and properly portray a story like this at the same time." Has there ever been a more accurate statement than this ? ---- "The best word I can describe this game with is its a Chore. I'm essentially killing the same bullet sponge enemies with the same uninteresting weapons with the same CoDCall Of Duty mechanics in the linear levels, with arena like battlefields for 12 hours. The game is just plain irritating, since the game is far too easy on normal, the death mechanic is problematic on higher difficulties. Every time I die, I come back, but my resources aren't replenished, and the enemies get most of their health back. This isn't difficulty, this is just pure frustration. This game is pretentious on the highest levels, one of the most praised "levels" is where you encounter the boys of silence, but it was just stupid, fighting midget Benjamin Franklins and seeing random signs that say "where we sleep" is goofy and ridiculous. At one point I was laughing at the racism where a robotic George Washington says dumb rhymes like: "with yellow face and slanted eyes, they betrayed us with their lies", was I just watching a SNL skit, because it feels like it at times." ---- "I felt that overall the gameplay was lacking because even when compared to the original BioShock or BioShock 2 it just pales in comparison mechanics wise and even with simple stuff like number of weapons, Plasmids, etc. I guess the main reason the story is praised so much is because not many people are well versed in the theory of the multiverse or just multiple universes in general." ---- "I think one of the most disappointing things about the game is the Songbird. It had so much potential. It's huge, it can fly, it's powerful and it's bulletproof. When I first saw Songbird, my thoughts were "Holy crap, how am I supposed to beat him?" and that was what I was thinking every time he showed up. It's clear that Songbird would have been your biggest obstacle for getting off Columbia, but that potential was wasted." ---- "It seems like BioShock Infinite tried to use the aesthetics of the game to disguise its shallowness. By making it look a certain way and feel a certain way, it distracts you from the fact that nothing is really happening. It's an illusion of depth that fooled so many." ---- It was so Ludicrous, dreamlike but not 'real' as a place that could be taken seriously. But 'Oh so pretty', for many players who have never been out of their parents basement. One hopes the Player's heads aren't screwed up too much with the quantum rubbish to have it interfere with their shooting and zapping and their 'knees bent running about' in the crazy abattoir cattle chute terrain. But seriously, was there any chance of that when the default is "Just wanna blow up stuff" being the primary demographic for these large AAA games. "Oh there's an execution move !!!!! Squeeeeeeeeeee !!!". Shameful really, to pretend anything about 'story'. ---- Player Comment About Infinite BS and Canon Bioshock Infinite is incredibly poorly written. None of it’s twists make sense in the context of their own universes, and it desperately comes off as baby’s first foray into multiverse theory. BaS is by far the worst part - wherein Elizabeth “I’m so important I now have my finger in the original Bioshock now too” DeWitt is somehow responsible for Jack coming to Rapture in one of the stupidest things I’ve ever seen. Why would Atlas need her help to get the key phrase? Why would he assume she knew? There are so many questions about B:I that make no sense to anyone who stops and compares them for a while. Bioshock 2 on the other hand is messy but coherent. It doesn’t contradict anything and tells an interesting story (especially in Minervas Den). Also has no one else noticed the Infinte storyline is almost identical to Bioshock 2? Like Elizabeth is just a discount Eleanor. ---- Player Comment about Infinite : "It seems like 75 % of the way through the game, they stopped telling a Bioshock story and just threw in some 2deep4u nonsense ending." ---- Player Comment : "Columbia, Its like Disneyland, except with Lynchings" ---- What Lessons SHOULD be Learned - SO many themes, so little time : Player Comment : "In addition to racism, the game was interpreted as tackling political and social problems, as well as exploring several themes such as 'constants and variables', American Exceptionalism, Extremism, Religious Fundamentalism, Ethnic Nationalism, Fanaticism, Cultism, Authoritarian Populism, Religion, Dichotomy, Sameness, Multiple Realities, Fatalism, Choice, Consequences, Free Will, Hope, Self-loathing, Denial, Rebirth, and Redemption." Seems like 'several' too many themes to me to do any of them properly. A mish-mosh catchall Social Justice Warrior menu seems to have served for the game's thematic subject matter. When it came time to actually present any/all of these subjects, it was delivered as laughable watered-down Pap. ---- Player Comment (On Trailers, Interviews, Made Before Release): I was appalled at what the later Infinite trailers showed. The other BioShock games had the sub-stories and 'points of view' of various characters presented via the sequentially developed Audio Diary arcs, and some of the radio messages to help piece together the backstory. Rapture was made out of solid concrete. Suddenly, there is a "Thought Experiment" aspect ontop of the religious Cultism and the original fantasy science strangeness. Any intended political and social meanings become unreal, now just part of a wobbly thrown together shooting game. The real or imagined 1900 world aspects waft by as Booker shoots his way to whatever contorted psychological conclusion they decide to spring on us. Who cares if the Munchkins elect their mayor with secret ballots, or there were factions of borough bosses in smoke filled rooms, or some disgruntled candy-makers blew up their guild's factory last week ? Dorothy is off on the Yellow Brick Road on a collision course with evil trees, flying monkeys, disfunctional sidekicks, and magical Oz's dictator, while trying to metaphorically struggle her way out of some unconsciousness and delirium caused by head trauma. The "Thought Experiment" is mentioned in the most recent video's first minutes of the game. The Cultism was mentioned in various released internet items more than a week ago. The whole place has gotten stranger and more remote from the reality of the 1900 era. I can't wait to see what the next change of direction is for the game. --- --- --- I Couldnt Have Said It Better Myself (a Player Commentary) : If you are expecting a sound explanation of Infinite, a story that attempts to do nothing to cover up its breathtaking logical inadequacies other than WOW! BAMBOOZLED! THEY DROWNED HIM HWAAAAAT! at the ending so that you don't think about how fucking awful and stupid it is, then... you are going to be sorely disappointed. Unfortunately, there is a real answer to Infinite and it's not the one any of us wanted, though it's the correct one : You played a garbage game, with a moronic story, written by hacks. "But muh multiverse" and "Elizabeth = magic" is the explanation for everything in the game. You freaking fight a ghost. A fucking ghost. If you want to play good Bioshock, REAL Bioshock (because Bioshock IS Rapture, it's literally Ken Levine who said that) and not the crap thrown into Infinite in a pathetic attempt to tie in -- and which undercut the gravitas of -- the first story, then simply ENTIRELY IGNORE the trash you just played, and replay Bioshock 1 and 2. Have fun, and good luck out there. --- --- --- Another for the Infinite BS, Levine Disappointment page : I wouldn't go so far as to say I can't stand Infinite, but I was definitely disappointed in it. The end result was a far cry from the pre-release video they put out, and everything about it (except for the story) felt stilted compared to the first two games. Levine F'd Infinite up. It was supposed to be so much more. The teaser trailer at E3 2 years prior was scrapped and redone. It got players excited, but then they destroyed it. --- Another: The story was crap to me man just because you use infinite dimensions theory does not make it a great story in fact it invalidates the story that already felt pretty forced to begin with. Also Elizabeth was only there to replace game mechanics I liked such as being able to keep some health and eve/salt containers for later use. --- And Another : Bioshock infinite was not a good game by any stretch of the imagination. By the halfway mark, I wanted to smash my head into a wall. The actual meat of the gameplay is rotten. It's just painfully boring. The story seemed interesting, but only because it throws so much at the player. --- --- --- Player Comment Comparison : "In Rapture the Fantasy could only be taken so far. With thousands of Tons of water waiting to crush you, reality was an important element." (On the other hand, it is evident the Infinite BS game authors didn't much care about anything logical, only how they could leverage the previous games' reputation/branding to sell it. They even went as far as contriving a final scene of a visit to Rapture to create that so tenuous link, when it was completely disconnected from the rest of the game's story.) --- --- --- --- --- . .